


Semi-somna

by Vexfulfolly



Category: Fantastic Four (2015)
Genre: AU, Everything hurts and nothing is good, Gen, Stream of Consciousness, Suicide Attempt, Whump, no beta we die like men, reed richards whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 16:38:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18553639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vexfulfolly/pseuds/Vexfulfolly
Summary: What really happened when Reed was captured by the government? A small look into the horrors he faced, and what he became because of them.OrThe government does what it does best: break down the opposition.





	Semi-somna

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [the instruments the gods plague us with](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5457221) by [fate-motif (Jo_Girard)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jo_Girard/pseuds/fate-motif). 



> Time to “start” 2019 with some Pain.

For the most part he carried himself with poise, a kind of dignity. Now and then, however, there were times of panic, when he squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn't, when he twitched and made choking sounds and covered his head and said ‘God help me’ and flung himself across the cell, or used his powers blindly, or cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to stop, or went wild and made stupid promises to himself and those people and to his mother and father, hoping that at some point it would all just end.

He carried it on his back and shoulders—and for all the ambiguities of this world, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single abiding certainty that he would never be at a loss for things to carry.

“I know what it is,” he said quickly. “The moral, I mean. Nobody _listens_. Nobody _hears_ anything. Like that dumbass, Allen. The doctors, all the military types. You. Me. Everybody's precious little brother or sister. What they need is to go out and listen,” he whispered. “You’ve got to listen to your enemy. You have to know them, you know? But don’t fall for that ‘keeping your enemy close’ deal— that’ll get you killed. Keep your enemy far, far away from you. Remove yourself. But you’ve got to carry all that information with you.”

 

—————_____________—————

 

Reed had been caught. Yes!

Congratulations to all parties involved! The government proved they could successfully* follow a trail of breadcrumbs left by a theoretical engineer who had less life experience than most fifteen year olds. They also showed that they could emotionally manipulate and coerce his friends into betraying him, as well as flashing their highly advanced equipment in order to contain and attack him.

(*: successful, meaning they needed one of their prisoners to do it for them)

God, the FBI were truly the greatest in their field.

Regardless, the rogue was now captured and they needed him to break. They needed to use him— every piece— from his brain to his blood, they wanted everything they could take. And take, they would. They would strip him down, flay his skin, burn his psyche, and reword every code that built his personality. They would disassemble him, mix up the pieces, and try to put them back again. Reed Richards was nothing more than a square peg that needed to fit into the round hole. So they filed him down. Scraped away all of the “unnecessary” parts and tried to sculpt a more cooperative model.

But they could never make him as cooperative as they wanted. No matter how much they changed him he still somehow managed to fight them— even if he couldn’t understand what he was doing anymore.

Everything about Reed had been fundamentally changed. When he looked at the glass and saw a reflection staring back, he often mistook it for someone else because Reed was sure he didn’t look like that. The details were still fuzzy, all the time, but when he looked at his hands he somehow knew they were his own. ‘Mine,’ he would think. ‘These are mine. I’m me.’

When they would ask him why he was staring into the glass endlessly, or why he was twitching his hands, all Reed would say is ‘because I can.’ The officers would always write down his answer, but they’d also shake their heads in disappointment. Of course this wasn’t the answer they wanted, but it wasn’t valuable enough to try and beat it out.

The feds, they just didn’t understand. They didn’t understand Reed the way they needed to. They never listened right. Were they even listening at all? The questions they asked, did they matter? Did he matter?

No, of course not!

But if that was the case, what did?

Memory was a difficult matter for subject number one. He had varying stages of remembrance. Some of the time he was confused— only parts of the information stuck with him. This Reed Richards knew his name and all of his personal details, from the day he showed his teleporter to his best friend, to his first girlfriend’s name, to his matter shuttle’s schematics. What he didn’t know was why he was in area 57. Strangely enough, he didn’t remember who the Storms were or what had happened to him (luckily for the FBI, it didn’t seem like he remembered his powers, so he never used them). Reed was terrified of The Thing that would stare at him from the other side of the glass, because the only Ben Grim he could remember was the talented mechanic and first baseman that he left in Oyster Bay.

The feds liked this one— Subject One—the best, for he was lucid enough to have a conversation with them, and just scared enough that he’d do whatever work they asked.

Other times, or more aptly put, most of the time, there was the Quiet Reed. For hours and even days on end this one would just sit and stare. When Reed got Quiet and curled up on the floor, the other subjects would be sent in to speak to him. These catatonic fits would grip him for indefinite amounts of time, in which he’d refuse all food and drink, wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t speak, and hardly ever reacted. (He only ever reacted one way— like the time when Ben screamed at him for abandoning everyone and Reed’s eyes welled with tears and didn’t stop for an hour after Ben left). His total indifference was perfect for tests, experiments, and trials— all of which were highly painful and downright inhumane. But it’s not like Reed was arguing.

_The days were nakedly and aggressively boring. But it was a strange boredom. It was boredom with a twist, the kind of boredom that caused stomach disorders. He’d be curled up under his bed, with the tubes disconnected and the sensors removed, the day would be calm and cold and utterly vacant, and he'd feel the boredom dripping inside him like a leaky faucet, except it wasn't water, it was a sort of acid, and with each little droplet he’d feel the stuff eating at important organs. Organs like his heart. Or his brain._  

_Little by little, the solitary and the beatings and the starving and the boredom and anxiety and the helplessness chipped away at Reed’s self control. Whenever it felt like consciousness was too much, being vacant was always a safe choice._

_It was hard to be bored when you didn’t even realize you were awake, let alone alive._  

The doctors didn’t like this Reed the best, but it did make their jobs easier. It was hard to pity someone or even think them human when they acted like a doll. He was practically another cadaver they were dissecting in death lab— except they couldn’t do it all at once.

 

Lastly, and most sporadically, there was the Other One. Every time it would be different, but the one thing you could count on was destruction. The Other One had only showed up a handful of times since Reed’s arrival two years ago— but it wasn’t something easily forgotten. The Other One is always sad at first, cripplingly so. This is the only time that Reed would ever weep or cry. It seemed like the guilt and fear would catch up to him and just crush the poor boy. He’s attempted suicide three times now; the first was hanging himself by his bedsheets, but his neck just elongated; the second was by getting shot, since he somehow managed to escape his unit and forced an officer to open fire (three abdominal bullet wounds and an upper thigh laceration proved no match for the doctors); and last but not least, he pulled a screw out of his bed frame and filed it down until he could tear his wrists apart (the medical team lost him twice on the table, but finally clamped all the vessels and let the transfusions do the work).

_Ben could still remember hearing the wailing from the vent. They kept Reed in the same little place he was before except he had 24/7, around the clock surveillance. Sometimes Ben would step in, look through the glass and see if he could see his friend— anything that even resembled him— and when he couldn’t, he’d treat him like any other assignment he got. But this time felt different. Reed wasn’t screaming in rage; there were no gunshots, he wasn’t writhing in pain; nothing was scheduled for today, so did that mean this is what anguish sounded like?_

_It was unnerving to hear the choked gasps and half clipped sobs carry so far— but it wasn’t like Ben himself hadn’t done that very thing when he first arrived._

_The sound went on for hours. It felt like it was playing on repeat— right when he thought Reed would finally shut up, it all just started over. In a huff, Ben decided to see for himself, whether Reed was finally understanding everything, or if he was just having another fit. After nodding to a few guards and stepping into the observation deck, he realized he had grossly underestimated the situation._

_Reed’s room was in shambles. The bed was overturned and broken, pieces of metal bent and scattered. The equations and prototypes lining the walls were torn off and crumbled. The glass separating the two rooms had a fist sized indent with a web of cracks to match. Of course the glass was stained red— it would’ve taken inhuman strength to even chip it— so Reed’s hand had to be pretty fucked up. That explained the few droplets of stark red blood against pristine tile floors, but something still didn’t feel right._

_It was then that Ben noted the crying had stopped. A few hiccuped sobs here and there filtered through the speakers, but the room was otherwise silent. There, in the middle of the room sat a cross legged Reed with his back to the glass. It seemed like he’d gone Quiet until a murmur rippled across the room. One of the doctors raised their voice and said his heart rate was too fast— the sensors were picking up spiked levels of stress even though he wasn’t moving. Momentarily distracted by the outburst, Ben had taken his eyes off of Reed and when he looked back he saw more red, like puddle. It spread out thinly across the white flooring with Reed at its center. It gripped his stomach with unease and made his immovable muscles twitch with purpose. That person— whether he was his Reed or not, or whether he was a traitor or friend— needed help immediately. When Ben opened his mouth to speak, his voice was stolen by the blare of an alarm and the sound of boots pounding the floor._

_Reed still didn’t move, not until his door was flung open. His face, tear stained and rosy turned to the glass as he searched everyone’s faces. Soldiers were grabbing his forearms and pressing down on the muscle deep gashes as nurses wheeled in a gurney, all while stepping on his work. He could almost hear a child’s scalding tone saying ‘what are you doing? You can’t fold blueprints! You have to roll them. And in that moment, he missed Reed._

_Ben met Reed’s eyes and he swore he saw recognition in the glare. Above all else, as Reed was hauled limply from the floor, Ben saw the horrific actions of someone who had given up. His goofy brother who knew more about circuits than he did about driving, his friend who held ice to his bruises and bandaged the cuts— his naïve Reed Richards had looked him in the eye and told him he gave up._

_Ben didn’t visit him again._

But the Other One never stopped there— the second he could get on his feet again, Reed would be pissed. It was an irrational kind of anger where there was no real reason, and when everyone tried to tell him, it did nothing except make him even angrier. Everyone thought Reed incapable of inciting the level of violence as the other subjects, but god, were they wrong.

The laundry list of things the Other One had managed to do was far, far too long for a government facility of area 57’s caliber, but alas, this Reed had his ways. The researchers learned just how far his abilities could go when he unlocked the interrogation room’s door— from the outside. He’d reached under it and popped the handle as if it was no problem. This was the first of many escape attempts, which always ended with him tranquilized and several officers with fractured skulls or dislocated joints, courtesy of their dearest subject.

_Johnny will never forget the sound of bones cracking as he turned the corner and came face to face with Reed and a guard. In a grotesque scene out of a horror film, Reed’s arm was distended and wrapped around the guard’s neck and chest, with his arms fastened underneath. Reed was sweating and focusing on a door in front of him. It was (obviously) locked, and he wanted through._

_Johnny watched a moment, waiting to see what was happening (and if his ears were playing tricks on him). As Reed punched in several wrong codes, a wet whimper sounded, only to be followed by outright screaming. The guard’s body then suddenly convulsed and quieted, as if the hollow snapping wasn’t enough to show what had happened. Still holding the crippled cadaver, Reed shushed the poor man. “Be quiet, I’m thinking.”_  

_A few wheezes came in reply, however they seemed to be too loud, so Reed dropped him bonelessly to the floor. Disgust was written on his face, but it soon brightened into a look of happiness Johnny hadn’t seen in years. The door uttered a tiny ding and popped right open, allowing him to disappear inside. It was then that Johnny finally spared a look around the hallway and immediately gagged. Dozens of bodies lay slumped across the hall, some with their jaws hanging off, others choking on blood, with very few visibly still alive._  

_He didn’t think Reed was even in there anymore._

 

The high generals and military leaders liked the Other One reasonably more than his other two faces. They claimed that this one had a true capacity for military work, more so than any of the other subjects, as long as they could control him.

And it looked like they did— when they corralled the scared Subject One into fixing the gate, or when they added internal sensors and anesthetic systems to the Quiet Reed— just not when the Other One came out to play. He was the last demon they needed to slay before Richards would begin training. Of course the other ones had their problems, but those could be easily fixed. They just needed a bit more time, and time, they most certainly had.

Two years was a long time.

It was half of a forgotten high school career.

It was a quarter of a master’s degree.

It was the difference between spelling b’s and theoretical science.

Two years was a long time to be held prisoner. But it was also a long time for progress to stagnate, and that was exactly what had happened to the FBI. When they scooped up Reed all those years ago they took everything from the barn he called a home. They poured over every piece of tech and scanned every document they could. Analysts were pouring over the details as the higher ups waited with bated breath for results.

They found nothing.

Nothing conclusive, at least. They found equations that were flawed beyond belief and notes written in gibberish, coordinates to the middle of the ocean, and newspaper clippings of ice cream ads. Nothing made sense; the code breakers, the interrogators, the doctors, not even the psychologists could piece together whatever Reed’s fractured mind was trying to say. The schematics and papers he would write within the cell were just as useless. The higher ups were starting to worry. They used up every precious second of clarity that Subject One could uphold, but he only told them things they already knew.

_“These… these equations don’t make sense. They don’t work! I don’t know what you want from me!”_

_“How should I know what’s in the— in the middle of the Atlantic? What are you not telling me?”_

_“I don’t recognize this cypher, okay? They just look like the ravings of a madman okay? Are you sure it’s even English? I don’t know what they mean!”_

_It was infuriating to say the least. On top of all that, Subject One started coming around less and less. Reed was staying Quiet longer and becoming even less responsive. Before, they could tell he was listening and that he understood every word being spoken to him, but now they couldn’t be too sure._

___Reed has been Quiet for three weeks now. They’d shoved a feeding tube down his throat after the first and tried pumping him full of adrenaline to wake him. He’d only been recorded sleeping (if passing out from exhaustion counted as sleep) for just over 23 hours during this period. They say he stopped breathing four times._ _ _

___The only one to have incited a reaction in Quiet Reed was Ben, a long, long time ago— so they called him in. It was a last ditch attempt. Reed was dying in the most horrific way, and Ben almost hoped nothing would happen and they would just let him die. But of course that didn’t happen. When did Reed ever do what anyone wanted?_ _ _

___When Ben entered the monitoring station, in between the hallway and Reed’s room, it was eerily like the last time he’d been there. There was more medical staff waiting this time around, but the set up was nearly identical. “We need you to try to talk to him again. Wake him up— get him to react. If there’s no change in his condition we’ll be forced to terminate our research.”_ _ _

___“Him too?”_ _ _

___“What do you me—“_ _ _

___“You’d terminate him too.”_ _ _

___“Yes.”_ _ _

___“Open the door.”_ _ _

___The hiss of an airtight seal released and the sound of an overweighted door told Ben he needed to go. No waiting. No hesitation.___

___Reed’s back was to the observation deck again, but this time instead of blood pooling around him, papers radiated outward in rings. Ben, in all his glory, squeezed through the doorway and just waited. Reed didn’t move, didn’t make a sound, and scarcely breathed. The silence was oppressive._ _ _

___After nearly a full minute of silence he started, “What, you won’t spare a ‘hello’ for an old friend?”_ _ _

___The physical weight that had been lifted when Ben’s voice cracked against the air came crashing down full force when Reed didn’t answer. Just as he was about to yell at the man, Reed beat him to it._ _ _

___“So we’re friends again?”_ _ _

___The words were slow, even, and methodical— all traits that were inherently wrong coming from Reed. He was supposed to be excitable, childish—unfiltered! Whoever was speaking wasn’t Reed, not anymore._ _ _

___“See, I thought we were brothers. With what happened, I could understand you hating me, but that didn’t stop us from being family. Then somehow you stopped caring.” Slowly, he started to rock forward and rise to his feet._ _ _

___“Do you know what they’ve done to me, Ben? Did you watch? Did you smile, and feel fulfilled knowing I’d suffer more than the three of you combined? Have you gone home recently? How is—“_ _ _

___“That’s enough.”_ _ _

___Ben’s booming voice easily silenced Reed, despite the gentle cut in every word._ _ _

___“I’ve lost my mind in here, Ben. A dozen times over. I don’t think I can stop now,” he said while turning to face him. Reed, in all honesty, looked like shit. His skin was shallow and hanging off his too-thin, too-fragile frame. There were scars lining his wrists and his nails had been removed after one too many attempts to tear his flesh open. The bones of his face caught too much light and casted too many shadows. The voice he was speaking with was calm and cold yet Reed stood defensively, as if he was expecting to be hit._ _ _

___Reed was afraid— but he was angry._ _ _

___“Give the Storms my best. They’re going to need it. You all will.”_ _ _

___“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”_ _ _

___“Well, if you were smarter, you’d‘ve figured it out by now.”_ _ _

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

___And then Reed smiled._ _ _

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Kudos are loved, comments are adored! This has been sitting in my drafts for MONTHS so I thought I’d post it. Is this something you’d like another chapter to? Let me know.


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